What’s Next? How Motivation Dies When You Reach The Top
Earlier this year, when the pandemic forced us all indoors, I decided to tackle a longstanding bucket list project — learning French. I downloaded the Duolingo app and started squeezing in lessons during breaks in my hectic workdays.
Although Duolingo is a do-it-yourself language learning platform, they gamify the experience by having players compete against each other in a weekly leaderboard. You earn points by completing lessons, and slowly advance up a series of ten ‘leagues’.
In the beginning, competitive juices flowing, I was highly motivated to do as many lessons as needed to advance every week to the next league. But once I hit the topmost league, the ‘Diamond League’, my motivation dried up.
To get demoted to the league below, the ‘Obsidian League’, I had to be in the bottom 5 of the 50 people that were in the Diamond League. It was easy to remain in the top 90% to maintain my spot in the ‘Diamond League’. All I had to do was maintain a baseline level of weekly lessons.
This got me thinking — we all need something to look forward to, aspire to, and work towards.
When you reach the pinnacle of success in any arena, project, or goal in life, you become complacent. After all, you…
